Bloomberg and Obama: Who Blinked?

It’s hard to know who has been most disappointing: our Mayor, who has changed his mind and now thinks that the trial of those accused of the murder of thousands of people in New York is too much for our city; our Senators, who quickly got on board; or our President, whose Administration is now, as the Times put it, “scrambling to assess the options” for a new location for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other September 11th conspirators—say, a nice military base somewhere. The New York Post and Daily News, in a rare harmonic convergence, ran exactly the same headline: “Bam Blinks.” (The only difference was that the News added an exclamation point, and the Post placed the story under one on “Eliot’s Advice on Love,” about a “bizarre, soul-baring interview” a “stupid cupid”—that would be Eliot Spitzer, yet another disappointing politician—gave to Big Think.)

The Mayor did say that “if we are called on, we will do what we’re supposed to do,” but that “there are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive” than lower Manhattan. Traffic downtown can be tricky. But we all have to make sacrifices. K.S.M. isn’t actually radioactive, or a being with strange powers. He’s a guy we can handcuff. The Times wrote that a trial “could make the city an even more attractive target for Al Qaeda,” but the key phrase there is “even more.” We are already pretty attractive—unlike whatever small town some New Yorkers would like to ship the trial to. We can’t change that, on some level, even on ordinary days, unless we want to drape an invisible cloak on all these skyscrapers. But a trial conducted properly will make us a stronger city. (And I write that as someone who lives a few blocks from where the trial would take place.) Also, as the Times points out, the prosecutors in New York are among the most experienced with terrorism trials—the best prepared to get the conviction the government is aiming at. We can do this if we try. Isn’t giving a jury of New Yorkers a chance to bring the 9/11 terrorists to justice worth it?

Why is money such a question? The mayor is talking about a billion dollars. That is a lot for New York, and Bloomberg is in a tough position, budget-wise. It looks like he will have to eliminate, among many other things, twenty fire companies—the sorts of units that made real sacrifices on September 11th, and that we promised, afterward, that we would always remember and support. That is a reason for the Federal government to contribute to the security costs, which Congress can do—not a reason to abandon our belief in the courts and the rule of law. And really—a war that we supposedly started to catch these very perpetrators has now cost, according to this week’s Congressional Budget Office numbers, three hundred and forty-five billion dollars, with a new request for thirty-three billion dollars in the works. (And that’s just Afghanistan: Iraq has cost seven hundred and eighty billion dollars, pushing the total over a trillion.) What was that for? Couldn’t the Mayor use his political leverage—and he apparently has some—to get the city the money for the trial? Maybe he didn’t have faith in the Obama Administration’s ability to deliver. From the Times:

Republicans in the Senate and House said they would try to block financing for civilian criminal trials for the alleged terrorists.

So we now need sixty votes in the Senate to put a murderer on trial? Something is wrong with that. But it’s not just declining to approve money. From the Washington Post:

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) plans to introduce a bill next week that would prohibit funding of a federal trial for Mohammed and other Sept. 11 defendants, in an effort to force the case into a military tribunal. An earlier such legislative effort failed, but a spokesman for Graham said that the senator has been taking the pulse of his colleagues and that “momentum has been building.”

Does Graham’s momentum amount to sixty votes? Are Democrats willing to filibuster him?

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.